Desert Mandala: Life In Central Australia

Amanda December 31st, 2008

Living in Central Australia means that we have an unusual Christmas. We don’t often spend it with families – our families live 1500 km and 3500 km away from us. Usually, we spend it with colleagues and friends.

As Gary is a ranger who works on a remote national park, we have a house in town (Alice Springs) and a house on at Watarrka (King’s Canyon) National Park. Remote parks have their own little communities of rangers and their families. At Christmas time, these ranger communities become surrogate extended family for each other. In the past, we’ve had incredible fun and incredible feasts at Owen Springs & Ormiston Gorge. This year, we spent Christmas at Watarrka.  It’s about 350km from Alice Springs.

Thus our Christmas was an evening gathering of rangers and partners. Watarrka has a good supply of vegetable gardens and chickens, and a number of very culinary-oriented rangers, so the array of food was diverse. There were delectable salads, cold meats, and several vegetarian dishes. There were even fiery chilli prawn kebabs. Several days later, we were still all sharing the food.

 There was Kris Kringle as well. Kris Kringle is where you buy a present anonymously for someone else. Usually, the names are drawn out of a hat. Hilariously, someone had found a c.1980 aerobics LP and a 1984 aerobics instructor book and gave them to me! I love them.

Over dinner, we shared stories, recalled the year, discussed plans for the future. We solved the problems of the world and shook our heads at things we will never solve (like coal-fired power stations or the incomprehensible fact that the ranger houses are still run from diesel-powered generators despite the abundant solar energy supply).

 As a backdrop there were whispering desert oaks, dunes all a blossom in wildflowers after the good rains, the birds, the sky, the stars. And the canyon. From the windows and backyards of the ranger’s houses –which blend incrementally into the surrounding sand country- Watarrka is always inviting the eye to survey the latest shifts in light, its planes and edges. Its deep, dark clefts.

 In the days that follow, we enjoyed walks, more impromptu socialising, pondering the waterholes in the Canyon, the wondrous opening of Spinifex leaves after rain, the purple-blue clouds of a passing storm. The smell of rain on red sand dunes. We visited Ian and Lyn Conway at King’s Creek Station and again solved the problems of the world. We also went for a helicopter flight over Petermann Pound.

Christmas on remote parks is one of deep community. It is raw and simple: about people, place, and connection to both. The peace and recharging effect of remote Australia often invokes pathetic clichés involving timelessness and emptiness and lame references to Aboriginal spirituality (which doesn’t exist in the way that white people understand spirituality). If you’ve read and felt the deep spirituality in The Snow Leopard or can relate to Jack Kerouac’s experiences in the wilderness in The Dharma Bums, or if you’ve ever spent extended periods hiking with good friends, then you will understand the authenticity of Christmas in remote Australia.

• Central Australia , Kings Canyon , coffee & raisin toast
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